DETROIT – While the annual Woodward Dream Cruise in southeastern Michigan is all about a nostalgic look back at the baby boomers’ halcyon days of the 1950s and 1960s “cruisin’” from drive-in restaurant to drive-in, socializing, checking out cars, impromptu racing and just having fun the NextCruise was all about a fuel efficient future.
With gasoline prices hovering just below $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, many new car buyers have been flocking to smaller, more economical vehicles. However, unlike the 1970s and 1980s, when fuel efficiency meant a downsized, underpowered, “knees on the chest” econo-box, nine automotive manufacturers got together during the “dream cruise” to show off the latest in green car technologies to the public.
The NextCruise included vehicle displays and limited ride-and-drives opportunities for the public who could climb aboard 30 vehicles ranging from an ethanol-powered IndyCar to the E85 fuel-powered Corvette Z06 Pace Car, the Toyota Prius, to the diesel-powered Jeep Grand Cherokee.
One of the organizers of the occasion, Paul Eisenstein, publisher of TheCarConnection.com explained why he thought the time was right for this event. “The green cruise is an obvious event to have,” Eisenstein said. “We wanted to take the Dream Cruise and expand it to look at where things are today and where they’re going tomorrow... This is about the love of the automobile, the American love affair with the car, but this is where the world is going.
“Our tag line is ‘Lean, Mean, and Green’ and by that we are trying to say that this is not the end of the fun times of the automobile. You will be able to have a lot of fun with vehicles that are cleaner and faster even when we go to green technology.”
Several of the vehicles on display were the antithesis of an econo-box, such as the Hydrogen BMW 7-Series, the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, or the Mercedes-Benz ML320 powered by the Bluetec diesel engine.
Many of the vehicles were part of a 13-day, 18-state, 4,300-mile cross-country trip sponsored by the U.S. departments of Energy and Transportation and the automakers. The goal of the trip was to raise public awareness of alternative fuel vehicles and to drive forward fuel infrastructure changes.
Looks Can Be Deceiving
Looking like a standard 5,000-pound BMW 7-Series from the outside, the luxury car on display at Memorial Park in Pleasant Ridge, just south of the Detroit Zoo and the Woodward-Interstate 696 interchange, had a few surprises inside. Taking up half of the spacious trunk was a large cylindrical tank while under the hood a few extra tubes could be seen running to the 6-liter, V12 engine. The car was a flex-fuel vehicle capable of running on gasoline – or hydrogen.
“This car is part of a fleet of 100 cars around the world,” explained David Buchko, BMW Advance Powertrain, Motorsport & Heritage Communications. “It has a regular internal combustion engine that is designed to run on hydrogen or gasoline. The key thing is when it is running on hydrogen what’s coming out of the tailpipe is water.”
The Hydrogen BMW 7-Series uses two fuel tanks – one with gasoline and the other is the cylinder that stores liquid hydrogen at minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit. Specially designed, they hydrogen fuel tank’s outer shell is separated from the inner shell by one-inch thick aluminum foil insulation that is in a vacuum and is the equivalent of 50 feet of Styrofoam.
“You could put ice cubes in this tank and come back six months later and there would still be ice inside,” Buchko said. “This is a green car (even with the V12 engine) because no matter how big the engine is or how big the car is, when you’re burning hydrogen, what’s going in has no hydrocarbons and what’s coming out has no hydrocarbons and you are using zero fossil fuels.”
BMW used its large 7-Series as the test bed for its small fleet of hydrogen-gasoline hybrid vehicles because the V12 engine already had a direct gas injection system, he added.
Hydrogen Driving
When driving the Hydrogen 7-Series, there is a steering wheel-mounted button that the driver can thumb to switch the car between gasoline and hydrogen fuel mode while driving. Other than an icon on the digital instrument cluster, there is no detectable change in the car’s smooth running operation.
“The biggest challenge in creating the car was from an electronics perspective,” Buchko said. “The engine had to be tuned so it can run on either fuel without telling the difference. We have lost some power over a dedicated gasoline V12.”
BMW built its Hydrogen 7-Series cars to production standards, and the 100 test models were assembled on the line with their normal brethren. The company is not revealing the costs, but a normal 7-Series has a manufacturer’s suggested retail price starting near $77,000. Several of the models were made to run strictly on hydrogen.
The German automaker is not the first to run hydrogen-fueled cars with internal combustion engines. Back in 2001, Ford debuted its P2000 H2ICE (hydrogen internal combustion engine) car, which was a modified Ford Taurus. Experimental fuel cell powered cars also use hydrogen as a fuel. Many other automakers, including General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Daimler also are experimenting with hydrogen-fueled vehicles.
BMW’s rational for building its Hydrogen 7-Series is similar to Ford’s – IC engines can run on alternative fuels and hydrogen has the potential of being produced by “sustainable methods” and is not reliant on a special resource located in any particular part of the world.
“Using the electrolysis processes (where an electrical current can be used to break water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen) hydrogen can be produced using solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy or nuclear energy – clean methods,” noted Buchko, who grew up in Ontario, Canada, near the hydroelectric dams at Niagara Falls. “The possibility exists to have a ‘wells-to-wheels’ cycle that is emissions free.”
Furthermore, the Hydrogen 7-Series tailpipe emissions were tested and meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Standards for safe drinking water. (Ready to hook up an espresso machine?)
Refueling Challenges
The drawbacks of the 7-Series include public fear about hydrogen as a fuel, the lack of a refueling infrastructure, and storage methods.
Some people may think of the Hindenburg disaster from 1937 where hydrogen was blamed as being a flammable gas and the cause of the German dirigible bursting into flames. However, hydrogen gas prefers to bond with other atoms – such as oxygen – and as a fuel is far less explosive than gasoline, Buchko noted.
Refueling sites are limited for hydrogen cars – other than those experimental stations built by the automakers near their research centers or at select locations with the major oil companies. Although, the lack of a hydrogen infrastructure is often pointed as a hindrance to the development of hydrogen-fueled IC engine or fuel cell cars, it should be noted that in the pioneer days of the automotive industry, motorists often had to go to a town’s pharmacy or general store to buy gasoline (a minor oil byproduct in the 1890s and early 1900s) and purchase it by the cup.
“That’s right. That (fact about early auto history) stands in the face of those who say this is a pipe dream and that it will never happen,” Buchko said. “Just because (the development of a hydrogen infrastructure) hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Collectively, the auto industry, energy companies and governments need to get together to make this possible.”
BMW chose to go with liquid hydrogen as a fuel because it would have a much higher energy density than gaseous hydrogen for the volume of the dedicate tank. Thereby, the Hydrogen 7-Series get much better range on hydrogen alone – about 125-140 miles – plus another 300 miles using its gas tank. The car cannot be left sitting for days in the sun and retain its liquid hydrogen fuel, however. As temperatures rise and the hydrogen turns gaseous, the tank is equipped with a boil-off management system to reduce pressure.
“The next generation of fuel tanks will feature something we call cryo-compression,” Buchko said. “It is a pressurized tank that is capable of storing liquid hydrogen, but can withstand higher pressures of gaseous hydrogen. That way, we won’t need a boil-off management system and it could be filled with either liquid or gaseous hydrogen.”
Green Luxury Cars Are No Surprise
People used to the econo-boxes of the 1980s – when the car buying public received “stone ponies” – underpowered and cars with reduced interior content – while paying heavy price premiums should be happy with what the automakers are offering now as enviro-friendly technology, noted Eisenstein.
“By looking at these vehicles, you can see that a green car can also be lavish, comfortable, quick, and it doesn’t mean you need to pay a premium. In fact, you may end up saving money in the long run,” he added.
Less expensive cars included the affordable Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid, the Toyota Prius and the Ford Escape Hybrid.
“Green technology is not just for the elite. If it’s going to be successful, it has to be available whether you are buying an entry-level car or the most expensive one on the market,” Eisenstein said. “I love the fact that we are seeing so many different technologies. That, to me, is what really excites me. It’s not what any one of these cars is doing, it’s that all of these vehicles are looking at a distinctive way of dealing with the problems that we are facing and coming up with individual and often very interesting solutions.”
Hybrid vehicles, which are electric vehicles (EVs) mated with an internal combustion engine, owe much of their existence to the abandoned electric vehicle concepts of the 1990s, including General Motors EV-1. The push for electric vehicles in the 90s came about because of a California State government mandate that 10% of cars sold in the State by 2003 had to be powered by electricity. Twelve other states adopted similar guidelines. So-called zero emission vehicles like GM’s EV-1 started to appear and were made available to consumers for lease. Under considerable lobbying pressure from the automakers and facing a suit backed by the Bush Administration the California Air Resources Board eventually reversed itself and the electric cars were abandoned. Most visibly the cars were sent to an out of state crusher. A scene immortalized in a scathing documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”. A public relations nightmare that reinforced the impression that America’s car companies were uncaring and out of touch.
“GM was one of the last companies to walk away from (electric vehicles) and it left a lot of people upset because it had one of the few if only electric vehicles that people got attached to,” Eisenstein noted. “The California mandate (to build EVs) failed but what it did was to kick start research into technology that is now the foundation of the green machines of the 21st century.”
“Don’t lament” the loss of the EV-1, because the fundamental research into battery technology that occurred during the 1990s is helping the development of a new breed of EVs and electrified cars, such as the Chevrolet Volt work,” he added.
The Hybrid Escalade
Toyota earned a lot of kudos from environmentally conscious buyers after it brought its Prius hybrid car to the U.S. in 2000 (far more than Honda did with it’s two-seat Insight that came out about the same time). Since then, Toyota, Lexus, Ford and other vehicle marques have debuted hybrid electric vehicles and one of the latest is the 2009 Cadillac Escalade Hybrid.
On the outside and inside, except for the exterior badging, the Escalade Hybrid looks very much like a gasoline-powered SUV. There are some critics – such as AutoNation CEO and Chairman Mike Jackson – who have said that hybrid buyers are demanding vehicles with unique sheet metal, noting the success of Prius sales versus hybrid vehicles that look ordinary.
Cadillac, by the looks of it, is betting that as hybrids become more common and more acceptable to the public, the “unique sheet metal” factor won’t be a motivator to new buyers.
Using a two-mode hybrid technology that was developed with BMW, Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz, the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid has a Vortec 6.0-liter V8 engine linked to an electrically variable transmission. Basically this means the Escalade has a “low range” for normal street driving and a “high range” for interstate travel. Its fuel mileage is estimated to be 18-mpg for city driving and 22 mpg on the highway, as opposed to the conventional model’s 12 city/18 highway.
With a series of planetary gears and clutches in its transmission – a gear term that Ford Model T owners would recognize, it has a large central gear with smaller gears that turn around it, much like planets going around the sun – GM’s design allowed it cut the size and weight of the hybrid components so they would fit into the normal Escalade package while offering better highway benefits. In operation, the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid has a quick-start and stop 332-horsepower V8 engine. When operating at low speed, it can run on its batteries. When the batteries need a recharge, the engine kicks on nearly imperceptibly to supply power
Mounted in the Escalades’ center consol is a display screen that can show when the SUV is running on battery power, or when the engine kicks. The one thing the console doesn’t show is when the engine is operating in cylinder deactivation mode when it runs as a V4 instead of a V8 to save fuel. The driver, however, can get that information on a screen in the instrument panel cluster.
The MSRP for the hybrid Escalade starts around $72,000, which is about $5,000 more than a comparably equipped gasoline-powered version.
Diesel Can Be Green Too
Former Detroit-area new-car dealer Frederick “Pete” Rosenau, who was at the “green cruise” event noted that one fuel-saving technology that America should embrace is clean diesel. Roughly half of the vehicles sold in Europe are powered by diesel engines that offer roughly 35 percent better fuel efficiency and provide 25 percent more torque than a comparable vehicle equipped with gasoline engines.
“As we continue striving to get away from petroleum and doing what we can to reduce the use of it,” Rosenau said. “In the meantime, we should be using a lot more diesel in the U.S. We could save an enormous amount of fuel.
“When I was a Volkswagen dealer, I had a diesel-powered Passat and I drove all the way to Lansing (about a 90 mile trip from the Detroit area) and back and the gas gauge didn’t move. It got 60 mpg. So, today’s diesel technology is 10 years better.”
While in Europe recently, Rosenau said that a friend shuttled him around for about two days in a French-made Peugoet. It wasn’t until the car was refueled that he learned it was powered by a diesel engine.
“I couldn’t tell the difference between it and a gasoline engine and usually I’m pretty sensitive about those things,” Rosenau said.
The 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI Clean Diesel and the Mercedes-Benz ML320 Bluetec were two examples of diesel-powered “green cars” that were available for the public to ride in during the NextCruise.
Many North American’s are familiar with noisy commercial vehicles powered by diesel engines, emitting bluish-black smoke along with a stinky smell, which was mostly due to sulfur that was in the fuel produced in North America before 2006. The high-sulfur content prevented the adoption of many European-style diesel technologies that have reduced tailpipe emissions.
For all intents and purposes, both the Jetta and ML320 operated and ran like conventional gasoline-powered vehicles. With the windows down, only the Mercedes had a very slight, detectable diesel “knock” when accelerating. But, it was relatively quiet when compared to a Ford F-250 diesel-powered pickup truck that passed it going the other way on a side street off of Woodward Avenue. Both vehicles had good low-end torque and no unusual smells or noises during the brief demonstration ride.
The first-ever NextCruise brought moderate attendance when compared to the street fairs that occurred up near the “Birmingham Triangle” up at the middle section of Woodward, where General Motors was set up, or the “Eaton Performance Park” and Dodge displays at 13 Mile Road and Woodward, or the Ford pavilions around “Mustang Alley” at Nine Mile Road. However, the event did spark some additional public awareness of future green car technologies that are entering dealer showrooms this year.
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